In the latest example of insanity, congress wants to penalize scientists who dare to work with Chinese scientists.

Scientists and research advocates in the United States are mobilizing to fight a bill that would essentially prohibit researchers with any ties to China and other countries deemed hostile from receiving federal funding. Nearly 800 academics signed a 29 October letter opposing the ban, part of a bill passed recently by the U.S. House of Representatives that sets spending priorities for the Department of Defense (DOD). A coalition of higher education and research advocacy groups has also urged Congress to strike the language as members reconcile the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with what the Senate adopted last month. Final passage is expected by the end of the year.

The Securing American Funding and Expertise from Adversarial Research Exploitation (SAFE) Act would deny federal funding to any U.S. scientist who collaborates with anyone “affiliated with a hostile foreign entity,” a category that includes four countries: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The prohibited activities would include joint research, co-authorship on papers, and advising a foreign graduate student or postdoctoral fellow. The language is retroactive, meaning any interactions during the previous 5 years could make a scientist ineligible for future federal funding.

You know, collaboration is an essential part of good science — both partners benefit from working together. There are many highly qualified, expert Chinese scientists we could profitably work with, and this kind of bill is only penalizing Americans, denying them research funding and restricting who they can partner with. The bill is sponsored by yet another short-sighted, ignorant MAGA Republican.

The act’s author, Representative John Moolenaar (R–MI), wants to “stop federal [science] funding from going to universities or researchers that collaborate with China’s military and intelligence services.” Moolenaar chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which has produced a slew of reports in the past 2 years decrying what it sees as a rising tide of such harmful collaborations.

We have a whole committee on the Chinese Communist Party? Chaired by a jingoistic conservative fanatic? Do they also oppose the Yellow Peril and the Red Menace?

Well, at least it looks like constituents are getting disgusted with him.

We’ve been dealing with this ridiculous government shutdown, which was initiated because the Republican budget was promoting major cuts in health care support, among other billionaire favorites. If done properly, the purpose of such a shutdown would be to get concessions from the opposing party. Now the Democrats are talking about caving to the opposition.

The Senate on Sunday made significant progress towards ending the longest US government shutdown in history, narrowly advancing a compromise bill to reauthorize funding and undo the layoffs of some employees.

But the measure, which resulted from days of talks between a handful of Democratic and Republican senators, leaves out the healthcare subsidies that Democrats had demanded for weeks. Most Democratic senators rejected it, as did many of the party’s lawmakers in the House of Representatives, which will have to vote to approve it before the government can reopen.

“This healthcare crisis is so severe, so urgent, so devastating for families back home, that I cannot in good faith support this [resolution] that fails to address the healthcare crisis,” said Democratic Senator majority leader Chuck Schumer.

I hate having to agree with Chuck Schumer, but he’s right: this is just a surrender.

It wasn’t the whole Democratic party that gave up, but eight chickenshit Democrats who joined forces with the Republicans to try to endorse a “compromise” bill. These are the people who must be voted against in the future.

From top left: Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin, Jacky Rosen, John Fetterman and Catherine Cortez Masto. From bottom left: Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan and Tim Kaine, with independent Sen. Angus King.

I am not surprised to see Fetterman in there — he disappointed me long ago. But hey, Tim Kaine was a Democratic vice-presidential candidate once upon a time, with Hillary Clinton. Maybe I should have mistrusted him even more.

If this compromise bill goes through, brace yourself for a big jump in the cost of health care.

The compromise does not resolved the issue of the Affordable Care Act premiums, which one study forecast would jump by an average of 26% if the tax credits were allowed to expire.

Keep in mind that that 26% goes straight from your pocket into the coffers of insurance companies, because of the fucked up way health care is managed in this country, with unnecessary middlemen inserted into the process.

Usually, I just ignore anything from Ben Shapiro and Co., but this time I was tempted by the headline, Mamdani’s Party: NYC’s New Mayor Celebrates Win By Channeling America’s Marxist Icon. Who would that be, I wondered. I had to read the rest.

Moments after being declared the winner of the New York City mayoral race, Democrat socialist Zohran Mamdani opened his victory speech with a nod to one of the most infamous radicals in American history.

Oooh. He was quoting infamous radicals? Tell me more.

Mamdani, 34, quoted Eugene Debs, a far-Left activist from the early 20th century who was stripped of his American citizenship after being convicted of sedition in 1918. Like Debs, Mamdani has embraced radical policies, including broad promises to provide a range of free services to New Yorkers.

“I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity,” Mamdani quoted Debs as saying.

The Daily Wire is afraid of Eugene Debs, well known Midwestern trade unionist and pacifist, and inspiration to Bernie Sanders? But of course they are. They don’t want a better day for humanity, they want a better day for billionaires.

Debs, who supported the violent communist revolution in Russia in 1917 and was deeply influenced by Karl Marx, had his citizenship restored by a joint resolution of Congress in the 1970s. From 1900 to 1920, Debs ran for president five times. He described capitalism as a “monstrous system” and said that his Socialist Party was defined by a “militant” spirit and “revolutionary” goals.

Debs was right. Not that Ben Shapiro cares about truth.

Debs campaigned for equality and against violence and war. He did run for president 5 times, because he believed in the electoral process. He was a pacifist in the run-up to WWI, which earned him the enmity of Woodrow Wilson — who was a terrible person and president, and pissing off Wilson was a mark of honor. Wilson had him charged with sedition. and he was sentenced to ten years in prison for it. Those years ruined his health and he died during the Depression, when everyone could see the failure of capitalism.

Debs made a passionate speech at his sentencing.

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

I listened to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this prosecution, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions…

Your Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in a fundamental change—but if possible by peaceable and orderly means…

Standing here this morning, I recall my boyhood. At fourteen I went to work in a railroad shop; at sixteen I was firing a freight engine on a railroad. I remember all the hardships and privations of that earlier day, and from that time until now my heart has been with the working class. I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison…

I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.

In this country—the most favored beneath the bending skies—we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child—and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity…

I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all…

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a great economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth.

There are today upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex. They are all making common cause. They are spreading with tireless energy the propaganda of the new social order. They are waiting, watching, and working hopefully through all the hours of the day and the night. They are still in a minority. But they have learned how to be patient and to bide their time. The feel—they know, indeed—that the time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when this emancipating gospel will spread among all the peoples, and when this minority will become the triumphant majority and, sweeping into power, inaugurate the greates social and economic change in history.

In that day we shall have the universal commonwealth—the harmonious cooperation of every nation with every other nation on earth…

Your Honor, I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice.

I can see the dawn of the better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due time they will and must come to their own.

When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people everywhere take heart of hope, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.

That man could speechify. I’d vote for him in a minute.

If only there were a faction within the Democratic party that actually represented Eugene Debs’ values…but of course they’d be vilified as godless commies by the Right.

It was a good night for Democrats and social democrats, with a big blue sweep all across the country. Mamdani won, although I think it helped that a corrupt clown like Cuomo (who was endorsed by Trump) was his opponent. Virginia turned a vibrant shade of purple. The California referendum on legalized gerrymandering passed, which I have mixed feelings about. Trump is literally hated by a significant fraction of the population, and I think he’s dragging the Republican party down. The Democratic party is also down — let’s hope that the leadership learns to recognize that their tepid timidity is not exactly electrifying the electorate.

Here’s one good summary of yesterday’s outcome.

He’s not right about Omar Fateh, who is running against Jacob Frey for mayor of Minneapolis. Minneapolis has ranked choice voting, and while Frey is ahead in the first pass, he didn’t reach the threshold — it’s going to take a few more days to tally up all the votes. Also, Kaohly Her, a Hmong woman and DFL candidate, won the St Paul mayoral race.

This is a good start to retaking the country from fascists. It is not the bigger 2026 midterm elections, though, and most definitely not even close to a 2028 presidential election, but we’re going in the right direction. I’m sure Trump is already annoyed and might be scheming to commit even more radical crimes in the near future.

Dick Cheney

Begin your day with a glad heart, everyone! The monster has dropped dead, those lips will no longer lie, those hands will no longer pull a trigger, that heart (which wasn’t the one he was born with) will no longer pump poison. Now he gets to rot, just like the hundreds of thousands, at least, he was responsible for murdering.

We get to suffer for a little while with the long-winded excuses and praises the media will deliver in the next few days. Just look forward to the time when he will be forgotten. It won’t be long.

Fuck that guy.

In a sane country, this latest brag would be the kiss of death for his entire party.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is standing by President Donald Trump’s latest, and most eyebrow-raising, renovation yet: a full-blown marble makeover of a White House bathroom. Posting on social media Friday afternoon, Leavitt gushed over the president’s flashy revamp, writing, “President Trump is making the People’s House more elegant and beautiful for generations of Americans to come!”

While we’re in the midst of a government shutdown, while we’re expected to support a budget that destroys health care and brings great profit to insurance companies and billionaires or starve the poor (or both!), Trump is focused on interior decorating and remodeling a bathroom, and on tearing down part of the White House and building a lavish ballroom.

While I agree that the original institutional green bathroom looked dated, I A) expect the president of the United States to be focused on more significant issues, and B) and think the boring, ticky-tacky idea of slapping marble and gold all over everything is no less cliched. I’d say I want the next president of the USA to bring on a wrecking ball and strip out all the gold plated fittings, except that what really should happen is that they will instead focus on repairing all the deep structural damage done to the country, cleaning up the raging corruption and firing the carpetbaggers reigning over our institutions.

Does the current president have nothing better to do?